SilverStone Sugo SG09 Case Review: Someone at SilverStone Loves Tetris
by Dustin Sklavos on October 20, 2012 6:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- MicroATX
Conclusion: Great Potential, But Needs Care
I've typically been of the opinion that for builders, Corsair cases are generally novice level while more experienced users can try their luck with SilverStone's more specialized enclosures. That continues to be true with the Sugo SG09, where it's clear to me that while the case is fine for a fairly general build, it needs a little more care to really shine.
Let's hit the positives first. The Sugo SG09 is able to cram a substantial amount of power in a very compact space, and not only that, it can do so without producing serious heat issues. I have reservations about the use of substantial amounts of mechanical storage in the space behind the motherboard tray (as well as reservations about even using a 3.5" drive in general), but for a couple of smaller drives the temperatures should be perfectly reasonable and well below drive spec. At the same time, the top intake fan, even at low speed, does an incredible job of keeping the CPU cool. Overclockers looking for a great case to work with may be surprised to hear me recommend the SG09, but there you have it. Graphics cooling performance is competitive at best, but I suspect the SG09 may benefit more from a graphics card with a blower style cooler.
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Of course, that gets into the SG09's essential "flaw." Building quibbles mentioned previously notwithstanding, the SG09 really needs you to cherry pick components to perform at its best. I think that makes it an excellent choice for boutiques looking to offer a distinctive build, but end users looking to build will have a slightly tougher time. Slot-loading slimline optical drives can be a pain to source for a reasonable price, and there's the added expense of having to use 2.5" drives as well. You'll also want to get a SilverStone modular PSU like the one I tested with here along with the shorter cable kit, and a fan controller is most definitely in order to get the most out of the SG09. As you can see, these things add up.
When all is said and done, though, I'm convinced you can put together a pretty awesome build with the SG09, and SilverStone has done a great job engineering this case for performance. I don't have the price tag on hand just yet (will update when I get it), but if it comes in at less than $100 it'll at least be competitive despite the allowances you should ideally make for it in your component selection. They seem to be pretty proud of the SG09 and it's easy to see why. Recommended.
Update: SilverStone let me know the SG09 is running $99, which is totally reasonable.
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ViperV990 - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
You also don't usually see more than 2 DIMM slots on an ITX board, whereas 4 slots is the norm with MATX boards.Grok42 - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I especially agree that expansion options on MBs are way over rated with two exceptions. I want the option to have a single discrete video card and as much memory as possible. I'll probably go mATX so I can have 32GB of memory. Unfortunately, I will drag along a bunch of useless cruft like pci-x slots, crazy amounts of USB headers and more SATA ports than I can ever possibly use. I can understand that there are plenty of people who want to build an overclocked dual GPU file server server with 6TB of storage with a Blue-ray drive. However, seems like the market should start also look to provide for those that want to build streamlined elegant single purpose machines as well. The only examples of this are HTPC side and it seems time for that level of focus to happen on the desktop.lmcd - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
AMD has a terrible mini-ITX board selection going for both AM3+ and FM2, so if you're looking at AMD you can't really go ITX. There might be a board or two for either of the sockets I just mentioned but they definitely don't have a full lineup there.EnzoFX - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Edit: 400W+, not 40W+.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Actually overclocking is potentially much better on an mATX board as there's more space for more power phases and so on. Extra DIMM slots, more expandability, enough power phases to overclock higher, etc. Look at what ASUS had to do on their mITX Z77 board to get decent overclocking hardware built into it.EnzoFX - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Which was my point. A decent ITX board can handle a decent overclock, what with overclocking being dead simple these days. So the real benefit is above average overclocks, and the lure of expandability, which I contest at being at odds with the typical ITX build. I realize this may be a great mATX case in terms of size and performance, so sorry if this comes off as a rant of the ITX space =P.We demand more focus from smaller cases haha.
tim851 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I agree. ITX-cases shouldn't cater to the Extreme OC audience or try to steal some workstation customers. ITX was made to be small.Even the ASrock board regularly achieves 4.5 ghz overclocks on 2500k/3570k cpus, if you look around the web. That will be fine for everyone outside competitive overclockers. As will 16 gigs of RAM.
I have a Q18 with such an oc'ed 2500k cooled by an H80. There's also 16 gigs of RAM, a 512 gig SSD and a GTX 670. And I've been spending much time trying to figure out if I couldn't cram all this into a Q03.
CloudFire - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
I know Anand has a youtube channel but I've seen mostly phone reviews on there. Why not do video reviews of cases too? I love reading articles, don't get me wrong but often times I love watching a video review more.Samus - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
really?exodios93 - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
What's with all the small, reasonable cases?Review something big and pointless like a little devil PC-V8 please.